IC2, GT, EU Suggestion/Idea Thread

[Chocorate]

Welcome, feel free to leave the rage on the coat rack.

I made this thread to compile all the great ideas regarding what should be changed and given a makeover in base IC2. I am aware that IC2 rarely gets new content, but I felt it would be great to share some ideas. If you see an idea you don't like in this thread, please take a minute or two to gather your thoughts before you threaten to kill someone's children. If you feel the need to ask why someone thinks something, or point out a flaw in their math or inbalance in their idea, please do so without opinion and keep in mind they might not know too much about the game. With that said, let's start thinking.

Solars
The biggest "problem" most people bring up with Solar Power is that it's lazy. You can make solar panels very easily (especially with CompactSolars), plop them down, and be set for quite a while. Some people like this and some people don't. In the past, AdvancedSolarPanels tried to nerf them by making the crafting recipe much harder. This was seen as a shortcut by a lot of people, saying that they should have just nerfed them rather than make nobody want to create them.
An amazing idea I saw a little while ago was one by Guswut (I'm sure many others have thought of it too) was that solar panels should require maintenance. Rather than just plopping them down and walking away, they should either 1.) accumulate dust that will reduce their output until it reaches 0, which you can then clean the dust off.
2.) eventually the solar panels would wear out and you'd need to replace their Carbon Plates. This is easy to create, yet it still requires maintenance.

Water/Windmills
Let's face it, nobody uses windmills or watermills (I commend you for sticking with them if you do) and they need a face lift. Yes, these are meant for early game power generation, but it would be very nice to be able to stick with them and use them more. A couple weeks ago, Enigmius1 and I were posting in a thread about an idea for Water/windmills. Rather than just be a single block that gets its power output murdered when you try to make it pretty, allow people to cover at least 1 side of the Windmill or something like that. So instead of mass producing them and putting them high in the sky on huge cable poles, we could make them look like real windmills and get good power generation. We also thought that watermills should be a multiblock structure shaped like an H, where the middle block would require flowing water touching it to generate power. Ideally, there would be different levels of watermill, from wooden early game to hydroelectric plant water generation. The point is that you wouldn't need 5 watermills all spread apart, but rather 1 large one that provides competent EU generation.

Feel free to post ideas on what needs to be changed within IC2 below. I'd love to hear about how the crop system or nuclear power or the original jetpack can be redesigned.

 

[Creeper Be Creepin]

Man this is a very good idea with the multi-block watermill. I like it a lot. With the solar generation that's a no from me sadly I'm the kind of guy that likes to plop something down and have it run. Plz don't murder my children but other than that great ideas.

 

[Chocorate]

Man this is a very good idea with the multi-block watermill. I like it a lot. With the solar generation that's a no from me sadly I'm the kind of guy that likes to plop something down and have it run. Plz don't murder my children but other than that great ideas.

Well of course it would be configurable whether or not they'd accumulate dust or be replaced.

 

[Creeper Be Creepin]

Ya good idea

 

[Abdiel]

In my opinion, the problem with IC power is not the generators, but the very easy and potent storage. You can get the full power from your fuel (burnable objects, lava, uranium) and store it in an MFSU for later use. Or you can use one of the infinite power sources (water, wind, sun) and fill up the MFSU at several EU/t overnight. Then, when you need to use the machines, you can discharge the stored EU at 512 EU/t if you want - enough to power anything. Very few IC machines use power continuously (advanced machines and a massfab), this means that you use power only when you need it - while you can generate it all the time. This means that the power limits aren't your power generators vs. your power consumption. They are the time you can run generators vs. the time you need to use your machines. On a server, with chunk loaders, this can be 24 hours vs. several minutes. Running even a single solar at 1 EU/t over a 24 hour period generates 1,728,000 EU - enough to smelt 4,430 items in a basic furnace. This in turn means that there is very little incentive to ever upgrading your power source. Renewability and fuel efficiency far outweighs power output.

How to solve this? Well there are several options, although most of them require a fundamental rework of the IC power system.

A) Completely remove any energy storage units, or reduce their capacity to a minimum (several packets of their size) to be only used as buffers. This will mean that if you are using a machine that needs 32 EU/t, you will have to have generators that produce 32 EU/t in total somewhere. There is no way to produce energy at 1 EU/t and stockpile it until it's needed. So the more machines you have, the more powerful energy generation you'll need.

B) Rework the machines to always consume a little power, even when not being used. (Think AE.) Again this means that with more machines you need more power generated. However you can control the power requirements by switching your machines off using splitter cables. This is still easily done, therefore machines should have a startup period when they're switched on - like the existing advanced machines. So you have a choice between keeping your machines running all the time and upgrading your power generation, or turning them on and off and wasting some power every time they start up.

C) Make EU storage units lose energy over time. The higher tier unit, the more energy it loses per tick. This means that you still can store energy, but you need enough power generation to offset the loss. And if you want more energy stored, or to be able to output it in higher quantities, you need even more generation.

D) Severely limit power obtainable from any renewable sources. Sadly this includes lava and burnable materials. Alternatively, introduce a non-renewable part that needs to be replaced (water turbine?) to every generator. Therefore the energy game won't be so much about how much power you generate per tick, but how efficient you are at generating power from a limited amount of material. Especially combined with one of the former options, this could lead to some interesting tradeoffs between efficiency and raw output.

I could probably see including A and D to result in the most enjoyable gameplay for me. But as always this is only a personal opinion and I know many people just want to have infinitely renewable power and not have to maintain it in any way. I don't think that this, especially if it's easily accomplished, makes for a fun game.

 

[CrafterOfMines57]

Rather than just plopping them down and walking away, they should either 1.) accumulate dust that will reduce their output until it reaches 0, which you can then clean the dust off.

I just wanted to pop in and say that, as far as I know, I don't think this is currently possible as EUs are stored and outputted in integer amounts; I think it works much like cable loss where if you have a 1.8 EU loss per packet sent through a cable, it just rounds down to a 1 EU loss, and changing all of the integers to double data types could possibly create a bit of lag, sort of negating the benefits of this approach.

EDIT: Hang on, I just realized that water mills can output less than 1 EU/t, currently looking into that.

EDIT2: Nope, turns out watermills use integers, carry on.

 

[Chocorate]

I just wanted to pop in and say that, as far as I know, I don't think this is currently possible as EUs are stored and outputted in integer amounts; I think it works much like cable loss where if you have a 1.8 EU loss per packet sent through a cable, it just rounds down to a 1 EU loss, and changing all of the integers to double data types could possibly create a bit of lag, sort of negating the benefits of this approach.

EDIT: Hang on, I just realized that water mills output less than 1 EU/t, currently looking into that.

You're probably right, but that's not the only problem. Another problem is that IC2 doesn't get new content. Hopefully Greg decides to fill early-mid game with something rather than tacking on something else to endgame.

 

[CrafterOfMines57]

You're probably right, but that's not the only problem. Another problem is that IC2 doesn't get new content. Hopefully Greg decides to fill early-mid game with something rather than tacking on something else to endgame.

IIRC, I think RichardG said something about him and Player having new ideas for 1.5 or something similar.

 

[Enigmius1]

In my opinion, the problem with IC power is not the generators, but the very easy and potent storage. You can get the full power from your fuel (burnable objects, lava, uranium) and store it in an MFSU for later use. Or you can use one of the infinite power sources (water, wind, sun) and fill up the MFSU at several EU/t overnight. Then, when you need to use the machines, you can discharge the stored EU at 512 EU/t if you want - enough to power anything. Very few IC machines use power continuously (advanced machines and a massfab), this means that you use power only when you need it - while you can generate it all the time. This means that the power limits aren't your power generators vs. your power consumption. They are the time you can run generators vs. the time you need to use your machines. On a server, with chunk loaders, this can be 24 hours vs. several minutes. Running even a single solar at 1 EU/t over a 24 hour period generates 1,728,000 EU - enough to smelt 4,430 items in a basic furnace. This in turn means that there is very little incentive to ever upgrading your power source. Renewability and fuel efficiency far outweighs power output.

It seems to me that obliterating the benefits of energy storage devices is an awfully harsh way to approach the situation. Unless someone is maybe not thinking so clearly, by the time they're making ongoing use of an MFE or MFSU, they're running all advanced machines anyway.

I don't understand this nickle-and-dime approach to modded Minecraft. People take little nibbles at stuff. And then everything around them seems so vast and powerful that it surely must be nerfed into oblivion to bring order back to the universe, when if they would just expand their thinking and envision systems and structures that take advantage of the packs they play they'd suddenly realize that things are actually pretty close to decent all the way around.

You point to how many items you could smelt with the EU from a single solar panel, but if you instead take a big picture approach and ask yourself how many items you could macerate, smelt, compress, or extract in a session... How many times can you need to recharge a mining laser or a lappack or nano/quantum/gravisuit armor? (I burn through that 1.8mil EU in about 10 minutes of flying around looking for endermen to gank.) How many forcefields can you charge? Tesla coils discharged? And of course the ubiquitous mass fab standing ready to gobble up anything that happens to be left over.

I'm not interested in a game where I have to spend the lion's share of my time tweaking one aspect of an energy meta-game instead of doing the things I find really entertaining, all in the name of people who think really small and expect their environment to reflect that. I have no problem establishing infrastructure, but maintaining infrastructure is only one of many ways to play modded Minecraft. If you want more involved systems to occupy your time, there are plenty of energy meta games you can while away your time on without making IC2 suck.

 

[Creeper Be Creepin]

Amen

 

[brujon]

I like Abdiel's C suggestion - making energy storage units lose energy over time. Forces you to keep upgrading your energy production, doesn't impact the play nearly as much as the other suggestions.

My suggestion for GT is: please, make it a stand alone mod. I get it that there is config files and that you can change them in order to not affect other mod's recipes, but the mod has such a unique sense of balance, i don't get it why it's not it's own mod yet. It just changes the game so much.

 

[Chocorate]

My suggestion for GT is: please, make it a stand alone mod. I get it that there is config files and that you can change them in order to not affect other mod's recipes, but the mod has such a unique sense of balance, i don't get it why it's not it's own mod yet. It just changes the game so much.

It is its own mod though. If you mean that it should split from IC2, that's sort of like saying Forestry should split from Buildcraft- its built on IC2, it's an addon.

 

[Poppycocks]

I personally wish IC added more mid-tier generators in the 128-512 range. Preferably running on composite fuels. Nitro diesel is a good example - although I'm not even sure if it's energy positive at the moment.

Something like that would require a massive investment into automation to work properly and would bring many mods together to make it work. This would also take the difficulty from tedium and move it to hard as you'd be working on infrastructure as opposed to waiting for your redstone to centrifuge or minig 3500 rubies. The Magic absorber is a great example of this. It requires a great use of mod interplay to produce enchanted items to keep it fed.

I also wish IC nuclear would move to the true multiblock universe, where you could BUILD and actual reactor, with rods and radioactive water and multiple coolant circuits and cooling towers with wast amounts of tightly packed steam turbines. This wouldn't even require that many new things - an temperature/radiation aware fluid, heat exchangers and block steam. Maybe a new type of turbines . The different deflectors would have to become blocks...

Well "wouldn't require that many new things" might be an overexageration, but I'd sure love to build that kind of a nuclear reactor.

 

[noskk]

Nitro diesel is energy positive, but the process is pretty complicated..

 

[Pokefenn]

I do feel that IC2 power generator is kinda, urgh.
Without greg i mean.
The only power sorces that burn are biogenerators, generators and geothermal generators?
Biofuel is kinda annoying to setup, generators are meh and lava just feels like hax.
And free energy im not a fan of this, i agree with everything you said (and i use windmills!)

 

[brujon]

It is its own mod though. If you mean that it should split from IC2, that's sort of like saying Forestry should split from Buildcraft- its built on IC2, it's an addon.

Yes, that's what i meant. But Forestry doesn't change BC, it adds other things and integrates with it, and can be used stand-alone, but it doesn't change anything fundamental about BC. GT does all of this. It should just be it's own mod, and cease to be an addon... It just changes too much, has a completely different sense of balance than the other mods, and a whole other game plan that you need to become accustomed to. To clarify the point further, i do think it should split from IC2. At this point in time, GT is no longer an addon or an extension of IC2, it's more of a reinterpretation, in that it keeps the same spirit, but fundamentally changes how you move up the tech tree, use up your resources, and generally play the game, it's just that it still uses the basic framework of IC2 including power generation & machines. And i don't really agree about it changing other mod's behavior that doesn't have anything to do with it, like the block breaker from RP2, and a host of other stuff. Like i've said, i know there are config files to change this, but it's just that i don't see the point in it even doing it in the first place. And, as the mod evolves, i'm sure that GT will keep changing even more stuff from other mods, further exacerbating the problem i've outlined.

Now, GT is not a bad mod by any means, it's a really cool mod, but in my opinion, what it aims to accomplish would be better achieved if it was made to be a self-contained mod, rather than an addon or an extension, with it's own take in sorting, ore processing, power generation, etc. Which, i think, it's what it has been evolving into. Now, everyone will say, but muh config files... And i say, yes, while it does give you the option of changing the config files so that it no longer interferes with other mods, the mod author's intent is clearly to impart a different kind of balance to the game.

Long story short, it's not a mod that wants to "play nice" with other mods. Don't fan the flames yet, hear me out.

In my opinion, if that's what the author wants, go for the BTW approach. Make the mod incompatible with everything, and develop your own game. I don't really see any other way out, as time will pass, GT will change even more stuff from other mods, and add it's own take on things, and further differentiate it's gameplan from the norm. And i'm sure that eventually, as the mod keeps interfering with other mods, it will polarize the community even more than it does now, and possibly aggravate other mod's authors that don't want other mods to mess with their mods. Like RP2, for example. If it keeps moving in that direction, i really, really don't see any other solution than it splitting off and becoming it's own thing, isolated from other mods. I think it's awesome that the author is keeping true to his ideals on how stuff should be done, and still wanting to provide integration with other mods, which pleases the community, i just think that the way it's being done will inevitably lead down the path i described. As a bonus, if GT became it's own thing, sort of like BTW is, the community could make extensions for it that hold true to the ideal of GT and it's sense of balance, and it could evolve into something even cooler than what it already is, while the other mods evolve in a different, yet similar direction.

 

[Golrith]

For solars, they should be a multiblock structure that intentially takes up a lot of space, just as base IC2 designed. But instead of having a ton of packets being generated and flowing around the cables, there should be a single block that "controls" the solar field. This block every 30 seconds or so checks to see how many solar panels are within a radius on the same level and attached to this block or another solar panel. This then is your total EU/t. From this one block flows the current.
No need for compact/advanced solars, and turns solars back to an energy source that supports your system, not a final solution to all your power needs.


For windmills, when I first learnt of them, I envisioned something that looked like a blade turbine, and so was quite dissapointed in the resultant single block. Would be more interesting if you had to build a block for the base, say 3 or 4 blocks in the middle to represent the blade, and a block on top to finish it off. This then produces the energy, and some sort of visual blade rotation effect could be put in place, even if something like the Lasers on the chickenchunks chunk loader.

 

[hotblack desiato]

I think, this step towards a mod on it's own is already done. greg added a system to turn IC2 machines into their automated versions. this way, he assimilates IC2.

the interesting part in GT is, that demands rethinking about already established processes.

when I played with tekkit, the system was simple: start a world, set up a nice little base. go rubber tree hunting. go mining. set up the IC2 equipment (macerator, extractor, furnace, compressor) and hunt for coal. turn 11 stacks of coal (less, if diamonds are available), set up a quarry and watch the ores coming in. useless stuff gets dumped into a condenser, usefull stuff gets sorted by some diamond pipes, and done.

and then I started FTB mindcrack.

1. wait, I need 3 diamonds for the macerator? I have none. I need it to produce them. but there is this pulverizer, let's see what it can do. it's not a diamond generating device, but it is nice too

2. wait, I now have enough for the quarry, oh, it needs a diamond drill head instead of the diamond pickaxe. damn... okay, I make the normal one and try to get resources through the IC2 miner.

3. finally, I have the necessary stuff for the diamond drill head... oh, it needs titanium ingots. where do I get those from...

and so on and so on...

so, it was the old minecraft-mod-ecosystem, but with a new flavour, with new challenges...

and regarding IC2: to be honest... there isn't anything else new there. and other mods (most notably forestry + thermal expansion) make IC2 redundand.


regarding the original topic: I quite like the nuclear system in IC2, although there are just a few already well known reactor designs... solar was always an alternative, but (with advanced solars) it is really OP. one nice little block, sitting around in the sun, and it generates more energy, than all these complicated power generation systems. no chance that they blow up because of wrong installation, and so on...

 

[Lambert2191]

IC2 windmills have been outclassed. If you want to see a mod that has done them well, and done them in an interesting way, look no further than RP2

 

[Exedra]

And Eloraams ones look way sexier. Just like everything else in her mod.